London Olympic Games to simulate cyber-attacks

Graham Cluley
Graham Cluley
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The London 2012 Olympic Games will open in nine months time, and – away from the glories anticipated on the track and field – consideration is being made about how to defend the world’s leading sporting event from cyber-attack.

The Olympics’ Technology Operations Centre (TOC), located in Canary Wharf, was opened to the media yesterday. During the games, hundreds of staff will work at the centre, providing 24×7 monitoring of the Games’ technology infrastructure, including IT security.

It was reported that the 2008 Beijing Olympics were on the receiving end of 12 million online attacks per day.

Of course, internet attacks come in all shapes and sizes, and some can be deflected very easily – so the large number of attacks at the last Olympic Games is not necessarily a cause for concern by itself.

Nevertheless, the rise of hacktivism and “doing it for the lulz” raises the…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry, having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky, or drop him an email.

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